Some nice folks from the Vancouver Olympic organizing committee came by the classroom today, to pitch first-year students on the idea of volunteering to work with press centre when the Winter Olympics are held here in 2010.

The response from the students to the pitch — a chance to cover Olympic events and offer press support — was largely enthusiastic: some were signing up online as soon as the presentation ended.

While I can understand the attraction of playing with the big boys and girls during a high-profile, international event, I find the whole thing a little distasteful. The press folk are recruiting 200 volunteers to keep the press centre running during the games to serve the needs of the international media. For their work, they’ll get a daily meal voucher and a personal letter of recommendation.

Here’s the thing: the same organization that’s recruiting these kids is spending $40 million on the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies alone. Take one-tenth of one per cent of that, and you could hand each of those 200 press centre volunteers an honorarium of $200 at the end of the two weeks. That’s not much money, of course, but it’ll buy a textbook or two, cover the groceries for a week or two, cover the cost of gas for getting to and from the media centre, etc.

It could be that I’m just being a grump about this. I seem to be one of the few people in Vancouver not infected with the Olympic “spirit.” In fact, if the college follows through with its plans to shut down for the two weeks of the Olympics in February 2010, I may take advantage of the time to find some sunshine and a beach somewhere.

I’m not about to dump on my students’ enthusiasm (unless they are among the few who read this blog), but I can’t help thinking there’s something exploitive about this whole thing.

As a design student at Emily Carr, I find this ethic disgusting and disheartening. If a rep from the 2010 Olympics came into my classroom and asked for design student “volunteers” to provide hundreds of hours of unpaid work to keep the olympics looking attractive to the public, I would be flabbergasted. Even as an undergrad, my talent is worth more than a wink and a nod.

This approach seems amateurish and, more to the point, cheap. And why are they asking for journalists to do the job of PR staff? (Probably because working journalists command a lower salary but do way better work that flaks)

But again, why journos? This is a job for a PR flak. Seems to me aspiring journalists should skip this since you’ll be nothing more than a Games booster for those two weeks. Working as press support for international journalists sounds cool – but you won’t even be able a decent fixer, because you’ll be too busy being that booster for the organizing committee and the Games.

Plus a letter of reference from them doesn’t seem too impressive when there will be TWO-HUNDRED other volunteers with the same form letter. And you’re only clippings will, again, be booster stories.

Sitting quietly at the back of the classroom with not a single comment after the presentation…i should have known you had much more insight into the whole idea than you let on.

I have listened now for five years from people from both side of the arguments for or against the games, as with most debates I’m not quite certain that the “right” answer is as clear cut as either side would like for us to believe.

I think you make a very poignant argument mark, only thing is that as aspiring journalist we are told so often how little money we can expect to make in this field and I guess somewhere along the way the folks at VANOC were tipped off and figured they could sell us on a trade…”a once in a lifetime opportunity” for a meal ticket and a reference letter…i mean c’mon how do we turn down a deal like that?

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A blog on journalism, media-related matters and some occasional personal stuff, by Mark Hamilton, a journalism instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, in the suburbs of Vancouver, B.C. You can email me or follow me on Twitter.